The N In NHS

Much as I like Daniel Hannan, his view of the NHS does call into question, if not his patriotism exactly, then at the very least his cultural Britishness, his feeling for and of this country. He has never seen a healthcare system that he did not like. Apart from the British one, which most British people strongly support.

Moreover, the party most of which would now die for America in a war against Britain, for Israel in a war against either, and for the Gulf monarchs somewhere in between, has no right to set the parameters of British patriotism.

Nor has the party of the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, the dismissal of withdrawal as "Loony Left" in 1983, the impending EU-US "Free Trade" Agreement, the agitation for such an Agreement between the EU and China, and the abject failure to deliver a real-terms reduction in the British contribution to the EU Budget.

Among much else, the EU-US "Free Trade" Agreement  would make NHS privatisation permanent. Not for the first time, one is left wondering quite what it is about the EU that people of Hannan's mind find objectionable. There is nothing. The real arguments against it are, and have always been, on and from the Left. Hannan now uses his Telegraph Blog to argue that the insurance-based healthcare systems on the Continent are in and of themselves arguments against the NHS. Read that again, until it quite sinks in.

And nor does any right to set the parameters of British patriotism belong to the party the mere existence of which is not only one of the strongest Scottish separatist arguments, but also the reason for the increasing advancement of serious arguments for the North of England also to consider secession, a view which until a very few years ago was only ever heard half-jokingly and towards the end of an evening's drinking. I repeat, the mere existence of the supposed party of the Union now has this effect.

It is in fact One Nation Labour, precisely because of its social democracy including the NHS, that is the force for the national and parliamentary sovereignty, and for the parliamentary and municipal democracy, of the United Kingdom in the face of all challenges: from the United States or from the European Union, from Israel or from the Gulf monarchs, from the Russian oligarchs or from the rising powers of Asia, from money markets or from media moguls, from separatists or from communalists, from over-mighty civil servants and diplomats (including in the intelligence services) or from over-mighty municipal officers, and from inappropriately imported features of the economic and political cultures of the Old Dominions, an inappropriate importation exemplified by Mark Carney and by Lynton Crosby.